Before you take ANY new drug, download the "Prescribing Information" for that drug.

The "Prescribing Information" is a legal document which must be approved by the FDA. It has to be kept up-to-date. It is the "label" you see mentioned in articles about the drug. Unfortunately, years ago the drug companies got the FDA to remove the... more

Though many people find that they can bring their blood sugar back into the normal range simply by limiting their carbohydrate intake, blood sugar control is not a short term project. When you have abnormal blood sugars you will have to spend the rest of your life keeping them under control, and not everyone is willing or even able to stick with a... more

Acarbose, sold under the brand names Precose, Glucobay, and Prandase, is a most neglected and useful drug available for controlling blood sugar. Like Metformin, it has also received industrial-strength testing to see... more

Among the oldest and cheapest drugs for diabetes are the drugs that force the beta cells to secrete insulin whether or not the blood sugar is high. There are two families of these drugs: the sulfonylurea drugs, which include Glyburide, Glimepiride, and Glipizide and the newer family of "glinide" drugs which include Stalix (natalinide) and Prandin... more

Nothing raises as much fear in the minds of most people with type 2 diabetes as the thought of having to go on insulin. This is a tragedy, because, of all the medications available to diabetics, insulin is the only one capable of not just lowering, but of normalizing, their blood sugar.

Afrezza became available in pharmacies on January 26, 2015. It is a brand new inhaled insulin. It is made out of molecules of regular human insulin that have been encapsulated in a special coating. Readers who have followed my blog know that I was very negative on the first inhaled insulin, Exubera. That was because it was extremely hard to dose... more

The GLP-1 agonist drugs are all members of the incretin drug family. They are all artificially created molecules that behave in a way that is similar to a human gut hormone called GLP-1 which stimulates insulin secretion and affects appetite. However GLP-1 is quickly destroyed in the body, so these molecules have been modified so that they last... more

The image I've chosen for this page is the Roman god, Janus, whose prime characteristic of facing in two directions seems very appropriate for the similarly named drug Januvia, which can be extremely effective and extremely dangerous.

Januvia was the first of a family of diabetes drugs that works by increasing the levels of GLP-1 in the... more

The FDA recently gave its approval to several new drugs that are part of a new class of diabetes drugs, the SGLT2 inhibitors. All have very troubling side effects. More are awaiting approval. The first of these was Johnson & Johnson's drug canagliflozin, which is marketed in the U.S. as Invokana. It is also sold in a combination pill containing... more

Avandia and Actos are members of a drug family called the thiazolidinediones, abbreviated TZDs. This is a relatively new class of oral anti-diabetic drugs which were developed during the 1990s. Three of these drugs began their careers showing great promise in the treatment of insulin resistance, and hopes were raised by preliminary research that... more

There are only a handful of supplements promoted as being helpful for people with diabetes that actually work. You can read about the ones that don't and learn about the flawed research and fake online marketing with shills that is used to promote them HERE.

Because you can make such a difference in your blood sugar just by cutting down on carbohydrates, its easy to think that there must be some other foods and supplements you could take which would have an equally powerful effect on your health and which might even be powerful enough to let you work that fudge sundae back into your food... more

A major problem with all drugs is that busy doctors often ignore potentially damaging drug side effects. Often they aren't even aware that these side effects are listed in the drug's Prescribing Information. That is because most doctors get their information about drugs from the pharmaceutical companies that sell them and doctors who are... more

A mild hypo is one that sends your blood sugar no lower than 65 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/L). It is not life threatening, but it can be very unpleasant, especially if you have been running much higher blood sugars and have just started a new medication that lowers them.

With a mild hypo, you are likely to feel shaky, nervous, and, sometimes,... more